Help For The Hopeless - Hope For The Helpless

ill.--A teacher had the unique job of teaching kids in hospitals long term. It was so they wouldn’t get too far behind in their studies. Every day she would receive a name and room # and a lesson to teach. One day she was given a grammar lesson on nouns and verbs and sent to the burn unit. She didn’t know until she got there just how bad it was. This boy was wrapped in gauze from head to toe...in so much pain. This was to be his first lesson since his accident weeks before.

She introduced herself and began the lesson, and he could barely groan or acknowledge her. She felt very badly for putting him thru the lesson in his condition, but it was her job, so she did it. The next day she walked down the hospital hallway on her way to another student. The boy’s nurse saw her and said, "What did you do to that boy yesterday?" She melted and began a flurry of apologies about adding any stress to his life at this time. The nurse stopped her. "What I’m saying is, he has totally turned around! He hadn’t been responding to treatment or even trying for us. He was lethargic in his spirit and had given up. Now today he is a different person. All of his levels are much better, and there’s a look of life in his eyes! What did you do in there?"

Later, after the boy was all better, they found out from him what happened on that day. "While I was laying there I thought I was going to die, and that they just wouldn’t tell me. I had given up. But when the teacher taught me that lesson I thought to myself--they wouldn’t teach grammar to a boy who was dying, would they? I realized I was going to live."

What did he receive that day? Hope!

Whatever you are facing--God didn’t bring you under this teaching today to tease you with hope. You aren’t the exception. He offers hope! You are hearing these words right now because it is not hopeless!

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Help for the Hopeless - Hope for the Helpless, pt. 2

John 5:1-9

Living the Christian life isn’t hard. It’s impossible. Only thru Christ can the impossible happen. The paralyzed man in our text was powerless, helpless, and hopeless for 38 years.

That was part 1: The Picture of a Sinner.

Pt. 2: The Power of the Savior.

1. What He sees.

v. 6 "Jesus saw...and knew"

He knows everything. Don’t cover it up...don’t kid yourself.

Jesus can see the inside, what you are thinking/feeling.

2:23-25 Here’s a group who wants to follow the Lord, but Jesus doesn’t commit Himself to them. They believed in Jesus, but Jesus did not believe in them. Why not? Because He looked inside their hearts and saw that they were only following Him because of the miracles that He did. They weren’t ready to commit for real. They were seeking the sensational and their own desires.

’Believe’ and ’commit’ are synonymous in Bible terms. Warren Wiersbe calls these in our text ’unsaved believers.’ It’s one thing to respond to a miracle, and another thing to believe on Jesus Christ. These were ’miracle mongers’, with no commitment.

And America is full of churches with unsaved believers!

Remember the parable of the sower? Only 25% of the seed ’took’. As for much of the other 75%, something stirred them, but they had no depth of earth.